27^th – 29^th October 2019; Sitges, Spain.

Prof. Ian Dodd (Lancaster University) gave a talk on ‘The ups and downs of root-shoot communication’ at the International Conference on Integrative Plant Physiology held in Sitges, Spain 27-29 October 2019.

He highlighted the importance of understanding hormone biology and improving irrigation and soil management to enhance crop yields in dry, compact soils. This was linked to future work to be undertaken in the SHui project.

The conference brought together specialists in plant ecology, physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology to share and discuss recent advances in plant biology.

On October 11th, BFU organised a seminar with SHui project researchers on soil management and its relationship with agricultural production at Beijing Forestry University in China.

Work in the Shui project is trying to understand how soil redistribution by tillage and erosion affects the availability of water to crops and their yield, and particularly whether yields are more sensitive in drought years.

Dr. Jose A. Gomez from CSIC, the project leader, introduced SHui to BFU researchers and students and presented his long-term olive orchard research. Results showed temporary cover crops, from Autumn to early Spring, can reduce erosion by one order of magnitude in olive orchards as compared to bare soil management, however they need to be carefully managed to prevent competition for soil water.

Prof. John Quinton (Lancaster University) delivered his research on soil erosion and its implications on agricultural production. Work with the Aquacrop model showed a significant simulated impact on water availability and yield following soil redistribution by tillage.

Prof. Peter Strauss (Federal Agency for Water Management Austria) shared his research on the influence of rainfall characteristics on soil erosion through his presentation titled ‘Climate change effects on rain erosivity, soil erosion and runoff flowpaths’.

Students also presented their current research and received helpful feedback.

This seminar showed students the methodological and conceptual frontiers in the study of soil management. Students were lead to think about the multidimensional implication of this area in our current world.

This seminar provided early-career researchers training and facilitated knowledge exchange among partners within the SHui project and beyond.

October 7-11, 2019

SHui partners from CSIC participated in the ISHS International symposium on precision management of orchards and vineyards, Palermo (Italy).

J.M. Ramírez-Cuesta, I. Buesa, M.A. Moreno, R. Ballesteros, D. Hernández and D.S. Intrigliolo presented their work titiled ‘Evaluating the effects of different management practices on vineyard evapotranspiration using remote sensing-based energy balance models’.

September 12-13, 2019

SHui partners from CSIC participated in the International mid-term Conference 2019 Italian Association of Agricultural Engineering in Matera (Italy).

A poster titled ‘Retrieving reference evapotranspiration for irrigation scheduling: forecast or past weather data?’ by D. Vanella, D.S. Intrigliolo, S. Consoli, R.C. Dumitrache, E. Matescu, J. Deelstra, G. Longo, S. Barbagallo, G. Lizzio and J.M. Ramírez-Cuesta was presented.

15-19 July

https://swat.tamu.edu/conferences/2019-vienna/

The conference was organized by BOKU partners within SHui (Prof. Dr. Andreas Klik) and provided an opportunity to exchange ideas on SWAT implementation within SHui platform. The aim of the modelling team of CVUT is to use the model for larger scale spatially distributed soil water content estimation, to be able to predict water availability for agricultural use, but also to test the model applicability in smaller scales. SWAT (as an open source tool) is one of the most used models for hydrological balances worldwide, but applied generally in large spatial scales (1000+km2 basins). The potentials of the model to be applied in 1+km2 basins is tested within SHui by Nina Noreika.

Talk at Lanzhou University

John Quinton – Lancaster University

On 21^st June 2019, Prof John Quinton gave an invited talk at Lanzhou University to almost 300 scientists. John’s talk explored how tillage and erosion change soil properties, particularly soil depth, and how this impacts on crop yields across agricultural landscapes. He demonstrated the importance of changes in water availability and linked this to future work to be undertaken in the SHui project.

                                                                                                                                                 Soil erosion near Xining, China.

Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Israel

Alon Ben-Gal

This application has been designed to calculate the Analytical Salt-Water (ANSWER) model [Shani et al., 2007, 2009]. By choosing a crop and soil type, the application will calculate the relative yield for any combination of irrigation water salinity and amount. Adding the relevant economic parameters (such as water price, different costs, etc.) the application can also calculate the expected profit.

Link to Digital Site: https://app.agri.gov.il/AnswerApp/